


melancholia

by vounoura



Series: knife wife and staff loser [5]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/F, I don't know what to tag this as haha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 13:56:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14021748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vounoura/pseuds/vounoura
Summary: 'Don’t play with fire', her mother had always said, and Nirasa wonders if this is what she had meant at the time.





	melancholia

**Author's Note:**

> hi I promise I'm not dead

_Don’t play with fire_ , her mother had always said, and Nirasa wonders if this is what she had meant at the time.

Naryu’s mouth burns upon her neck, the nip of teeth a sharp pain against her senses. Her fingers wander up her sides lazily, tracing the outline of her ribcage, her hip.

( _Don’t play with fire_ , her mother had always said, even though she knew it was always a lost cause.)

It’s too much, and yet not enough. Her fingers curl into her palms so hard she feels her nails nearly break the skin.

~~She wants to forget. To forget, to forget, to _forget_. She wants the heat of Naryu’s wandering fingers to banish the ice from her own, to burn away the _regret_. Her heart beats, a phantom pain, too fast, too slow, she cannot tell.~~

~~Her teeth rattle with the foreign cold of a Daedric plane, even though the room is overwarm.~~

She knows Naryu keeps a knife in the nightstand beside her (Why? She’s never bothered to ask, really. Naryu’s an assassin, and she supposes assassins do odd things), and her mind fixates on the blade with a disturbing fascination.

(She wants to feel the edge of that knife, feel it part the skin and find a final resting place in the beating, crimson flesh of her heart. The sensation of cold metal parting hot, yielding flesh is one familiar to her, of blood pooling deep within her lungs.)

~~Drowning, drowning, drowning. ‘ _Bring forth the blood sacrifice_ ,’ Mannimarco says, and the world falls apart with a deafening roar.~~

~~Does she long for death still? She doesn’t know.~~

But Naryu replaces the knife with a kiss instead, pressing her mouth softly to the bare skin above her heart. Somehow it burns all the same; the fingers wandering her sides, the slide of bare skin against her leg. Every movement that is not her own produces an inferno of _touch_ and _sensation_ , and Nirasa wishes that it would simply consume her and leave her to dust.

 _“I will be here for you,”_ She murmurs against the ragged skin, voice so soft she barely catches the words. She murmurs them until the sentence loses meaning, murmurs the mantra against her skin, her throat, her lips.

(The guilt hurts. It’s been years since the Planemeld, since the Soulburst, since Coldharbour and the war and everything else she’s been running from. It’s been years and she’s still here, crushed by the horrors of it all, still afraid of the night and what lurks in the images behind her eyes. What a burden she is.

 _What a selfish, horrendous creature you are_ , a voice affirms, dark and convincing and seductive. _All take and no give._ )

Naryu moves back up her body, slowly, so slowly that Nirasa barely notices it, until her lips are tracing the shell of her ear, until her fingers tangle themselves in her hair.

 _“I love you,”_ she whispers, pressing her mouth to her temple with a silent sort of conviction, _“Now and forever.”_

And with three simple words Nirasa feels her resolve crack, feels the first few tears slip past her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> 03/29 edit: fixed some missed spelling mistakes.


End file.
